EXPERIENCE I STILL CAN'T EXPLAIN WHAT I SAW It was 40 years or so back, but I can recall it vividly. It was a calm, clear morning, sunny with a breeze. I had walked to the highest point around to meet a school-friend to go walking and take in the spectacular views. We trudged these hills regularly. I knew every view, knew what to expect. The russet tinges of cottongrass in autumn. A light green flush of new plants in spring. And, as summer progressed, a pale straw colour as the life gradually faded out of the sedges. But this spring morning there was a strange shape in the familiar landscape. It was a mile or so to the north, on the brow of the next ridge. A white object. Not startlingly white like fresh snow. A sort of uniformly dull parchment white. Set against the spring green vegetation, it stood out because It was so incongruous. Its shape was odd. An igloo-like half dome of polygon-shaped sections, its flat base on the ground. A geodesic dome like those at the Eden Project, but smaller and opaque. As always, I carried binoculars, so there was no doubting the object's shape. It was the size of a small house. It didn't move; there was a steady breeze but the dome didn't shake or flutter, even though I had the sense it was made of a fabric-like material rather than something solid. It had no windows or doors that were visible. No other features. Then I noticed sheep running from it. Sheep are everywhere in these hills. Sometimes you surprise one in a world of its own, chomping away on tough old grasses. It runs off, startled. But only for a few yards. These sheep were really startled. They ran and ran, 30, 40, 50 yards. Yet the object didn't move at all. I looked around in every other direction. I suppose I was doing a reality check. Everything else looked as it always did. The far-off peaks, the stone-built cairn to the north-east, the distant conifer plantations. Nothing else was different. So there was just me - a 16 year old boy - and a white dome. I kept staring at it. Then, suddenly, it began to move. Silently. Not in the direction of the wind but almost directly against it. Slowly and perfectly smoothly. It looked as if it might be gliding a few inches above the rough sedges and moor grass.

Within a few seconds the dome had disappeared from view down a gentle slope into a shallow stream valley. I never saw it again. I had watched it for 15 minutes. It had left no evidence of flattened vegetation. "Did you see that?" I asked my friend when he arrived later and from a different direction. “See what?" he said. The ridge hadn't been visible to him. The image is still there, ingrained In my subconscious, as fresh now as if I was standing again on that isolated hill. I have told only a few people. When you've seen something you can't explain, you become sensitive to those glances that imply you've made it up. After all, there's nobody to corroborate it. Where I saw it was - and still is - one of the least inhabited places in Britain. There was no one else around that day, nor most days, on those denuded hills. An ex-GP I told was convinced I had been hallucinating. On stream water? In central Wales in the 1960s? But what I saw that day was no apparition. Over the years, I've trudged back several times to the spot where I stood (I still go walking with that boyhood friend) and to the place where the object stood when I first spotted it - a slightly raised ridge of rocky ground in the shallow undulations of those waterlogged, peaty hills. I can't shake off its image. Today I look at that spot and wonder if I'll ever know what that incredible dome was. It wasn't a grounded weather balloon - it didn't billow even a fraction in the stiff breeze. Was it some kind of prototype transport for use on rough or wet ground being tested out of the public gaze? But why so far from any habitation or road? Why no windows or doors? How could anyone steering see where it was going? It is the only object I have ever seen for which I have no explanation. But that image is as clear now as it was then, hotwired in my brain. I've never referred to it as a UFO. Unidentified, yes. But it didn't fly. I thought I would have forgotten about it long ago, but the desire for an explanation remains undimmed. I think about it now more than ever, but I have no answers. Perhaps I never will have Malcolm Smith . October 14 2006 The Guardian Weekend

I have always loved this mysterious and beautifully written tale which appeared in the Guardian newspaper. Images, Indeed!